The New York Times Co. threatens to shut down The Boston Globe, unless the Globe's unions make serious concessions. At some point we may see The New York Times Co. shutting down The New York Times.

Unemployment hits 8.5%. There are mixed signals coming from the economic numbers, but I expect the unemployment numbers will continue to get worse, probably hitting 10% by year's end. That's just a WAG on my part but, based on the recent performance of the economists, politicians and bankers, my guess is as good as theirs.

In Iowa, the state Supreme Court rules a law banning gay marriage as unconstitutional. I haven't read the decision, or the relevant provisions in Iowa's constitution, but my guess is that the court got it right, if their constitution is at all like the one in Massachusetts, where the Supreme Judicial Court made a similar ruling some years ago. The bottom line for me is, if you're going to let the state into the institution of marriage by creating a state-sanctioned legal framework of rights, responsibilities, and benefits, then how do you limit them to heterosexual couples? Unless homosexual behavior is proscribed as anti-social (as sex with children or animals is), then it seems to me the people who engage in this behavior have every right to the same legal framework as do people who engage in heterosexual behavior. Of course, I also believe that this would also apply to people who wish to marry more than one other person, as I also do not see any logical basis for limiting the institution (again, as a state-sanctioned matter) to couples.

Citizens of Pakistan who wish to live in the modern era are disturbed by a widely released video of a Taliban commander in a region of Pakistan flogging a young woman. Perhaps this video (they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so perhaps a video is worth ten thousand) will galvanize the people of that troubled country into a recognition that the Islamists, as represented by the Taliban and Al Qaeda, are barbarians, and can only be fought to the death, rather than make accommodations with them.

The "New World Order" is simply a fantasy.